Boris Johnson during his visit to Washington this week.
Photograph: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images

The Foreign Office is studying a package of measures to ease relations with Iran before a visit to Tehran by Boris Johnson that has been billed as the foreign secretary’s chance to win the release of the jailed British-Iranian Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe.

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On Friday, the FCO was playing down the chances of a breakthrough in the visit later this year, and stressed that any measures to ease Anglo-Iranian relations had already been under consideration before Johnson said incorrectly that Zaghari-Ratcliffe had been “teaching people journalism” in Tehran. Her family and employer have always said she was on holiday at the time she was arrested.

On Saturday morning, Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s husband, Richard Ratcliffe, said he wanted to meet Johnson this week and had asked to join the foreign secretary on a trip to Iran. He said the Foreign Office made contact with him on Friday, two days after Johnson said he was willing to meet Ratcliffe.

“I think it’s important now that he tries to meet with us as soon as possible, like next week, so that it’s clear from a political point of view that the UK government is standing alongside Nazanin and her family,” Ratcliffe told BBC Breakfast.

He added: “I think it’ll happen now, in a way that two weeks ago I wasn’t so sure. I think it’s really important that he gets on a plane to go and see Nazanin. I’d really like to go with him and that’s a serious request I’ve put to the Foreign Office.”

Ratcliffe said he has been told his request is being looked at as “a serious consideration”.

The Iranian judiciary and media seized on Johnson’s remarks, made at a foreign affairs select committee hearing last week, to claim that he had revealed the truth about her activities in Iran.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe had already been sentenced to five years in prison and Iranian officials had threatened to add extra charges even before Johnson’s remarks to MPs. However, his error gave Iranian hardliners a further incentive to take a tougher line with her.

It has been reported that Zaghari-Ratcliffe had been hooded and interrogated, had cried uncontrollably when she was separated from her two-year-old daughter and had spent her first eight months in solitary confinement.

Quick guide

Boris Johnson's errors of judgment

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe

Boris Johnson said that the British-Iranian citizen Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, convicted of spying in Iran, was “simply teaching people journalism” – a statement her family and her employer both said was untrue. His comments were subsequently cited as proof that she was engaged in “propaganda against the regime”.

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Homa Hoodfar, 66, a Canadian-American professor who was also held in Iran for three months and spent two days in the same jail as Zaghari-Ratcliffe in June, made the claims in an interview with the Times.

“Nazanin was very upset,” said Hoodfar. “Her interrogators had promised if she signed these papers she would be able to get out and be with her baby. Desperate, she went ahead and signed but they wouldn’t let her out. She was crying about her daughter who was going to celebrate her second birthday. She just talked about her little girl and cried.”

Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s family told the Times her treatment had left her suicidal and they fear this could happen again if the Iranian judiciary carries out a threat to double her sentence.

The Foreign Office faces a dilemma over what step to take next because any package of measures designed to ease relations was likely to have been proposed regardless of Johnson’s mistake. The political danger is that the proposals will now be seen as an attempt to buy Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s release and ease the pressure on Johnson. There is also no guarantee, given the complex rival power bases in Iran, that any deal struck with the Iranian Foreign Ministry would hold sway with the judiciary or the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.

The key areas for discussion are likely to be the Iranian claim for billions in compensation for Iranian firms that had assets frozen during the era of sanctions; a full easing of banking restriction for Iranian companies and individuals operating in the UK; and, most difficult of all, an easing of the threat of US-imposed sanctions on companies that operate in Iran.

Johnson took the unusual step of travelling to Washington this week to challenge Donald Trump’s view that the Iranian nuclear deal should be abandoned.

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The Guardian understands that Iran believes that the Foreign Office package would help to resolve outstanding issues. Iran would want the measures to be announced before the foreign secretary’s visit, so it would not appear they were designed to secure the release of Zaghari-Ratcliffe or alleviate the cost to Johnson’s standing. Iran has not made any specific demands in return for her release and believes any explicit attempt at an exchange deal could backfire.

Since nuclear-related sanctions against Iran were lifted in January 2016 following the nuclear agreement, Tehran has faced serious obstacles in reconnecting to the global market. The UK, in particular, is seen by Tehran as reluctant to take concrete measures to reassure the market about business with Iran or resolve the ongoing banking issue.

Nearly two years on, no tier-one European bank is prepared to do business with Iran for fear of falling foul of the US Treasury and its existing sanctions relating to terrorism and human rights. Some smaller European banks, mostly those with no US exposure, have started handling Iranian payments but the atmosphere in the UK is such that even the Iranian embassy, which reopened in August 2015 after a four-year hiatus, has not been able to open a bank account.

No UK bank deals with Iran and only a few business agreements have been attempted between Iran and the UK since the nuclear accord, with none appearing to have succeeded so far in attracting the necessary finances or actually materialising.

Iran is frustrated that the UK has not been able to bring even RBS, which is majority-owned by the government, into business with Iran. And it is irritated by the fact that London is becoming a hub for a network of exiled Iranian television channels. At least five, including BBC Persian – which is the most loathed by the Iranian establishment – operate out of London. Tehran feels it is sending a message to those working for the networks by keeping Zaghari-Ratcliffe in prison on accusations of training journalists on behalf of BBC Persian.

The Iranian judiciary, which is responsible for handling the Zaghari-Ratcliffe case, has opposed any pressure from other countries over its human rights record. A visit to Tehran in 2014 by the EU’s former foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton irritated Iranians because she held meetings with a number of prominent human rights activists, including Narges Mohammadi, who has since been jailed for 16 years.